King of Arizona

Jan 23, 2021

It was a windy night with lightening and thunder, but no rain at our camp. In the morning we drove into Lake Havasu City and stopped at London Bridge. We walked the waterfront and took a few pictures. It was sad to see all the closed businesses. There only a few people in the area, compared to last year when the waterfront was packed. 

We stopped in Quartzite, AZ for gas and to eat lunch. We saw an area with tents, so we drove by and parked at the Quartzite PowWow Gem and Mineral Show. There were many booths of rocks and stones. We thought they would have other items, but it was mostly rocks.

We stayed for 10-15 minutes and at that point we had enough of the show. We loaded up and started driving out of town. Once we passed over the freeway, we saw a huge area of tents, people and cars. We realized that we had parked at the overflow area of the Gem and Mineral Show. On the south side of the freeway was the main show area. It was at least 10x the size of the area we stopped at. The road into the parking area was backed up (and we had seen enough rocks), so we didn’t stop or take pictures. There are a lot of people how like looking at rocks.

We about 25 miles south of Quartzite to KOFA National Wildlife Refuse. KOFA is named after the King OF Arizona mine which is inside the refuse. We first stopped at the Spiral Labyrinth. Someone “carved” at perfect spiral in the desert, just outside of KOFA.

It was interesting to see and good to see that no one had ruined it. We set up camp a bit off the main road and spent the rest of the day at camp. It was an overcast day and windy, so it was too cold to do much outsite.